Moodswing - Uncorrected

I hate the idea of Daniel hooked up to wires like a coma patient. Mind you, I have no idea if coma patients are commonly hooked up to wires, it just seems like they should be, you know, in case their heart stops beating or something. I have actually been near someone whose heart stopped beating once, someone who was not in a coma, someone who was just standing there in the aisle of an aircraft, and you would not believe the ruckus a person can make when that happens. They flail around and flop on the ground and knock things over, and it’s pretty obvious to everyone around them that something is wrong. They certainly don’t need a wire hooked up to them to alert others at that point, whereas if they were in a coma, now, they probably would not flop much at all. Their heart could just stop with hardly anyone noticing.

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Hence the necessity for wires. Coincidentally, it’s Daniel’s damn heart that is the cause for the wires. Ever since he was diagnosed, which was years ago, I’ve been teasing him that this is proof he’d do anything for attention. “Always fucking grabbing the fucking spotlight, fucker,” I said, because I tend to spout profanities even more than usual when I am heartbroken. For example, the day my brother-in-law called to tell me my little niece almost got crushed by a runaway car, her little liver lacerated by her own ribs, all I could do as I flew to the Phoenix hospital where she’d been airlifted was sit in my seat, clutch my head and whisper, “Shit. Shit. Shit.” The other flight attendants patted me on the shoulder, insisted I drink some water and told me my “nephew” would be fine, that God would take care of him. Since all I could do was cry and cuss, I never told them it was my niece, actually, who was hurt, and that it was God, actually, I held to blame. Soothed by their voices, though, I let them speak uncorrected.

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Regarding Daniel, I try not to act like it’s any big deal, his condition, but sometimes it hits me all of a sudden, the probability, and I am frozen for a bit. I swear my own heart stops when I think about it, so I try not to too much. But when he is joking about his wires, like how he’s going to take them off himself and put them on his fat house cat, Jenny, and let the doctors decipher that, the panic creeps in and I just can’t bare it. “You goddam fucking pussy,” I respond loudly, laughing loudly — everything loudly, as I have inner sounds of my own to drown out.

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I remember when my father’s heart stopped beating. At the precise moment it happened, I was flying over Orange County in a four-seat Cessna that was getting tossed in a storm like a bathtub toy in a Jacuzzi. My roommate John sat next to me, a pound of cocaine between us, and he behaved surprisingly pussy-like for a pusher. He put his head in my lap and cried the whole way, certain we were bound to die horribly. I was certain we would not, but I didn’t like him much, so I let him cry uncorrected. When the clouds cleared, I remember looking at the lighted landscape below and thinking the formation reminded me of a skull. Wouldn’t it be funny, I thought, if that meant something? Weeks earlier, on my academic calendar hanging on the wall at home, I’d drawn the image of a skull on that very day, in anticipation for a scheduled biology test I was certain I’d fail. In the end, I skipped the test and hopped that impromptu plane ride to Los Angeles with my drug dealer roommate instead.

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“Doesn’t that look like a skull to you?” I gleefully tormented John, pointing out the window of the plane. “Look, the sign of death. Could it be a bigger sign?” I smiled inwardly as John whimpered and the plane continued to lurch. Since then, I’ve been on more than 1,000 flights, and that one still marks as the most turbulent. It also marks the last time I was unafraid to fly.

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The next morning, I learned my father’s heart had stopped the night before and no one was there to hear the ruckus he made, no wires attached to him to alert anybody. His heart just stopped with hardly anyone noticing. “I could hear him crying,” said his neighbor, words that are, to this day, nearly unbearable to process. For months afterward, my roommates made much creepy ado about the stupid skull I’d drawn earlier on my calendar on that very day. John, in particular, thought there was some otherworldly reason for the image I’d foreshadowed on the day of my father’s death. “She knew,” I could hear him whisper to my other roommates. “She saw the sign of death.”

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I remember thinking it would be great if that were true, if there really was a wire that connected us to a reason for things, even if it’s just a reason for why we search for a reason when there is none. “Really, she knew,” I could hear them whisper. In response, I simply lay in bed, bereft, letting those people believe they found a reason for something, letting them continue to talk uncorrected.

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Hollis Gillespie, a Writer’s Digest “Breakout Author of the Year,” is the author of Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch: Tales from a Bad Neighborhood (now available in paperback) and Confessions of a Recovering Slut and Other Love Stories. Her commentaries can be heard on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” www.hollisgillespie.com.